Text messaging is a method of communicating short messages between various types of devices. Text messages are transmitted over the Short Message Service (SMS) and Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) protocols. Messages sent via SMS are limited to 160 characters in length. MMS messages may contain longer strings of text, as well as photo, audio, or video data. Messages sent over both protocols are commonly referred to as “text messages” or “texts.”
Because SMS messages are limited to 160 characters in length, users have developed shorthand conventions for expressing common sentiments in such messages, such as “LOL” (“laughing out loud”), “ROFL” (“rolling on the floor laughing”), “BRB” (“be right back”), “NP” (“no problem”), and many others. Although MMS messages do not share the same length limitation, such messages typically are similarly brief due to a variety of factors, including user convention, device interface considerations, historical technological limitations, and bandwidth concerns. Thus, these shorthand conventions are common in text messages sent both by SMS and by MMS.
Some of these common abbreviations are known as emoticons. Emoticons use text characters to depict certain emotions, usually as representations of facial expressions. For example, probably the most common emoticon is a “smiley face,” typically drawn as two or three characters: “:)” or “:-)”. Other common emoticons include “;)” (a wink), “:D” (an extra-large or open-mouthed smile), and “:P” (tongue sticking out). Emoticons allow text users to express complex emotions using very few characters, conserving available space in text messages and reducing typing requirements.
Another type of symbol used in text messages is known as an emoji. Emojis are essentially pictographic versions of emoticons or other symbols. In order to use an emoji, a user may type a specific character sequence indicating to his text-messaging software that he wishes to send an associated emoji image, though some text-messaging software also allows users to directly select the desired image rather than typing in a character sequence. The text-messaging software then replaces the specified character sequence with the appropriate image and sends it to the intended recipient. Some such emojis are static images, while others may be animated. The Unicode Standard character set adopted several hundred emojis in version 6.0, and added approximately 250 more in the latest version, 7.0. The current Unicode Standard may be found at http://www.unicode.org/versions/Unicode7.0.0/ (last visited Jul. 29, 2014), and is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
One drawback to emojis, however, is that the images used are drawn from fixed sets of images built in to the users' text-messaging software. Users are thus unable to customize the images they send to express any sentiment beyond those already provided with their software. Moreover, the set of animated emojis may be particularly limited compared to the various thoughts that a user may wish to express with an animated image in a text message, and the animations are typically limited to in-place images that cannot move in relation to the surrounding characters.